


Sugar Butter Flour

by treefrogie84



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Castiel/Dean Winchester, extensive cameo by Eric Bittle, learning how to bake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23685991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: Cas is human, for good this time, he says. And nothing says "Welcome to Humanity" like pie, right?Now, if only Dean could get this pie crust to come out right.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 17
Collections: SPNColdestHits





	Sugar Butter Flour

**Author's Note:**

> Shamelessly borrowing Eric Bittle from [Check Please](https://www.checkpleasecomic.com/comic/01-01-01) because that's who I am as a person. This can't remotely surprise you anymore. Come enjoy my soft queer hockey boys with me.  
> Title is stolen from Waitress because Beyonce seemed too on the nose.

“Just make sure you’ve cut your flour and shortening together until it’s pea-sized,” the kid on screen says, his soft accent slipping into a drawl. He’s working quickly with a couple of butter knives, drawing them through the mixture opposite of each other.

Dean frowns, reaching over with a flour-y finger to pause the YouTube video and looking back at his bowl. He’s using a fork-- something about better control the kid had said-- but he’s not sure he’s getting anywhere near pea-sized. Annoyed, he pulls the fork through the bowl and compares the results to the frozen picture on screen. He does appear to be getting closer at least.

Pressing play again, he listens to the kid prattle about meeting his new team with pie in hand while he finishes combining the flour and fat.

“Now, normally I’d use butter, but shortening’s a lot easier, and cheaper, to keep on hand if you’re cooking for a crowd.” He glances over his shoulder at some noise that Dean can’t hear. “By now, your pie crust should look like this:” He shows a close up of the bowl, the slightly off-white of the flour and fat showing up nicely against the dark blue bowl. It is crumbly, with most of the pieces a little smaller than a pea.

Dean pauses the video again and mashes the fork through the mixture a few more times until his, more or less, looks like what’s in the kid’s bowl.

“Okay, y’all. This is where it becomes more of an art.” Blonde hair flips into his face and he impatiently pushes it out of his face with the back of his hand. “Go ahead and make a well in the center of your bowl and crack your egg into it, and then add your salt-- remember to give it a few seconds for the salt to start to break down the egg white. Then, you’re ready to add your water.”

Dean pauses the video yet again, taking a deep breath and cracking open the egg. This pie has to be perfect, and despite the host looking like he’s about sixteen, this is the video Jody sent him when he admitted defeat. (She’d said something about Patience knowing the host back when he was leading summer camp and she as still in grade school, but said nothing about why she was asking the girls for advice.)

The egg white and salt slip to the side like a slug, exposing the sunshiny yoke and Dean glances doubtfully at the coffee mug of ice water sitting on the counter. Somehow, a few tablespoons is going to turn this into a cohesive mass?

But Cas deserves pie (Cas deserves so much more than pie, like a home that’s not a hole in the ground, a family that doesn’t… Dean strangles the thought and runaway anxiety) so pie he shall have, even if Dean keeps fucking it up somehow.

“Now, you’re going to start with five tablespoons of that ice water from earlier. Just sprinkle them in and take a good hard look, smush everything together some with your fork. If you’re still dry and not holdin’ together? Add another half tablespoon or thereabouts. It’s always easier to sneak up on the amount of water needed than to take water back out, so go easy.”

Dean goes ahead and adds the extra half without thinking about it, reaching into the bowl with his clean hands and getting everything mixed together. It feels like dry playdough, with the palest yellow streaks marbling through the dough. Turning it out onto some plastic wrap, he forms it into a disc and wraps it up, shoving it into the fridge to cool back down as the host prattles about his moomaw and her years of pie baking.

Letting it play, Dean consults the cookbook on the table and the mound of peeled and sliced apples on the cutting board. Dumping them into a bowl, he sprinkles them with sugar, cinnamon, and some nutmeg, and sticks that in the fridge too.

Going back to the video, he backs it up to when Eric had pulled the pie crust out of the fridge and then pauses it again. He needs to let everything get chilled before starting to fuck with it, he remembers that much.

This is going to turn out like so much crap and… Dean takes a deep breath and holds it, pretending he’s not doing one of Sam’s stupid hippy meditation tricks. When it helps, he does it again before sitting down at the table and staring at his phone. He doesn’t even turn it off the video, or press play. He just… stares at the kid, wondering what he’s doing now, over seven years after it was published.

Hell, what was he doing seven years ago, while Patience’s friend was posting YouTube videos? The trials to close Hell and that aftermath? That sounds right, but his math could be off by a couple years. Dean takes another deep breath and breathes out slowly, trying to regain the calm he had while mixing the dough up.

He can do this. He can welcome Cas to humanity the right way this time, with good food and a clean room instead of… Instead of booting him out the door, with no money, no phone, no plan.

Pie. He can make Cas a pie. He knows he can-- has vague memories from when he was really little of helping roll out crust. Or thought he did, Mom said she always bought them, but maybe one of Pastor Jim’s church ladies?

Not that it matters right now. What matters right now is pulling that crust out of the fridge and rolling it out, nice and thin, so he can fill it with apple-y goodness and maybe get a message across to Cas that way.

Sprinkling the counter with flour, Dean cuts the chilled disc in half, rewrapping it and sticking it back in the fridge before contemplating the chunk in front of him. There’s flour everywhere, the counter, the dough, the cheap rolling pin, even his shirt and hair. Picking up the pin, he presses it into the dough and rolls it away from him.

The dough goes easily enough, although it’s not even. Rotating it a quarter turn, Dean pushes the pin through the dough, over and over again, until it’s a mostly smooth, even surface.

Part one done.

Transferring it to the pie tin is tricky, somehow, but he manages, with only a few tears that he pushes back together. It’s not as pretty as Eric’s, but it works. Working quicker this time, he rolls out the other half of the dough, getting ready to drape it over the top.

Lattice work would be prettier, but he’s not sure he wants to attempt it on his first try.

Apples in, crust draped over top and random slits cut in the top, and then into the oven and he’s on the home stretch.

This part at least isn’t that different from normal cooking, where he does the dishes while waiting for everything to finish, and enjoys a beer if there’s time.

Dean’s elbow deep in dishwater, keeping half an ear out for his timer, when there’s a timid knock on the doorframe.

“Dean?” Cas looks around the kitchen warily. “I… I wanted to check on you.”

Dean checks his nod, pointing towards the table. “I’m working on something for you.”

“And it requires spending hours in the kitchen? Alone?”

“No! Well, maybe. This time it did. I don’t know if it always does.” He closes his eyes in embarrassed horror, begging his brain to shut the fuck up.

“Apples and… cinnamon?” Cas asks, glancing around curiously.

Dean nods awkwardly as the timer on his phone buzzes. “I, uh, remembered that you liked PB&J last time, but…” He pulls the pie from the oven and sets it to cool on the stove top. It might be a little over browned on the edges, and his crimping job looks even worse now.

“You made me a pie?” Cas whispers, looking around the kitchen like there might be a trap. “I…” He looks absolutely stricken and for the first time Dean realizes how badly this could backfire on him. Does Cas even like pie?

“Kinda a welcome to humanity present.” He takes a deep breath and forces himself to breath it out slowly, his knuckles going white around the towel still in his hands. “I fucked it up last time, listened to-- I should have kept you with me. Here. I can’t… I want to undo it, but I can’t. So I’m trying to do it right this time.”

“Pie is what you eat when you’re with your family.”

“Not always, but most of the time, yeah.” Dean hopes he doesn’t sound as bewildered as he feels-- this is _so_ not the reaction that he was expecting somehow. “If you don’t want to share, I get it. Pie’s awesome.”

Suddenly, he has an armful of six foot former angel wrapped around him in a tight hug. Dropping the towel, Dean hugs him back, squeezing tightly and waiting until Cas lets go first. “I didn’t think you liked it that much.”

“You made me pie, Dean. And acknowledged me as family. I…” He releases Dean entirely and takes a step back. “Thank you.”

Dean swallows roughly and turns back to the dishes. “I need to finish up in here and the pie needs to cool some but… we can go pick up some ice cream, to go with? If you want. Or cheese, some people like cheddar cheese on it.”

“Ice cream would be good,” Cas says, grinning like he just won the lottery or something. “I don’t think I’m ready for cheese yet.”

“Alright.” Dean scrubs the last bowl clean and rinses it, setting it aside to dry. “Let’s go then.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I'm aware there's no way Bitty would use crisco instead of butter. Crisco is substantially cheaper and is what my family uses and guess who's recipe I have memorized? Call it a Haus experiment if you need t.


End file.
